The present invention relates to support boards for use in securing the extremities of an infant against motion, for example in protecting the infant against injury while infusing intravenous fluids.
To infuse fluids in the veins of an infant, a butterfly needle is placed in a vein of the infant through the skin of an arm, hand, foot or leg and is left in place to communicate fluids to the vein. While the needle is thus in place in one of the infant's extremities, that extremity must be secured against motion to prevent dislodgement of the needle and injury to the infant.
Nurses practicing in the neonatal area have developed makeshift devices for securing the infant's extremity to the bed sheets. For example, a portion of a diaper or a piece of gauze is taped around a tongue blade and taped to the extremity, the diaper or gauze then being clipped to the bed sheet to prevent motion. Vinyl has also been used for this purpose in place of the diaper or gauze material.
The correct practice is to back the tape with a second piece of tape so that the adhesive surface will not contact the infant's skin. This prevents stripping of the skin from the extremity when the tape is removed. In practice however, backing has not always been used since this is time consuming. The resultant breakdown of the skin leaves the irritated site subject to infection.
In neonatal applications, the child is placed in an incubator or beneath a radiant warmer. The use of tape to secure the device to the infant is not advisable under these circumstances since the tape can melt, becoming fused to the skin and causing skin breakdown, which also increases the likelihood of infection.
Available materials which overcome the disadvantages of tape for use in holding an arm board against the arm of a patient include a fabric laminate sold under the trademark Velfoam. This material includes a napped fabric laminated with a foam material to affix the board to the patient's arm; strips of this material are wound about the board and the arm, and held together with hook tape. However, this method does not insure that the arm board will not be moveable relative to the patient's arm. This problem is particularly acute in neonatal applications where the support board is necessarily small and the child is prone to frequent, random movements. Also, this method is not well adapted for affixing a support to the infant's foot and leg since the board is disposed at an angle thereto.